


Fake Kill Scare

by icewhisper



Series: Holiday Cheer & Tears [20]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Bad Things Happen Bingo, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 18:39:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17085602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: Leonard Snart grew up in the squeaky captain’s chair of a grounded time ship.





	Fake Kill Scare

Leonard Snart grew up in the squeaky captain’s chair of a grounded time ship.

He knew what his mother was, the life she’d led before she fell in love with the man set to destroy her life. When he was young, they were bedtime stories, full of travels and warnings about messing with things he shouldn’t. There was an irony to it, he thought, considering the road Lewis took. It was the same road his father led him down when he got the chance, a fate signed, sealed, and delivered.

He held onto her while he had her, wandering familiar halls of a ship she’d disabled years ago. The AI — Ginny — still spoke up sometimes, like she was shaking herself out of hibernation to say hello just before they lost her again.

He liked Ginny, even if she tattled on him any time he ventured too close to certain areas. His mother scooped him up every time he tried. “My little lion,” she’d tell him with her breathy laughs, “you are trouble.”

They escaped to the ship on the bad nights, hidden away in living quarters and a dusty bed. He curled into her chest, little arms wrapped tight around her middle, and pretended the bruises didn’t hurt. “I didn’t mean to make him mad.”

She shushed him quickly, rushing to push his curls off his face. “You didn’t do anything wrong,” she told him every time.

“Daddy got mad.”

“I know,” she whispered as her face turned sad. “Promise me, Leo, any time he gets angry, you run here. Ginny will keep you safe.”

“What about you?” he asked, but he never had time to figure out if he meant to ask if she’d come with him or if she’d be there to protect him. A drunk driver took her a week after he turned eight and he cried at her grave, big tears rolling down his face.

His father told him to quit being a baby.

Ginny played him recordings of his mother’s lullaby.

 

 

He raised Lisa in the same squeaky captain’s chair, because she wasn’t his mother’s blood, but he liked to think his mother would have loved Lisa too. She loved the ship, eyes bright in ways he usually only saw when she skated, and happy laughs as she ran through the halls he’d learned to walk in.

Ginny’s camouflage settings protected them from Lewis. Len never asked if Lewis simply didn’t care about the overgrown back yard or if the AI did something to make him look past it. It wasn’t important. A haven was a haven.

He lost it when he was sent to juvie, sealed away from the ship that had become a security blanket. He floundered without it, angry and speaking words with too much bite.

If it hadn’t been for Mick, he doesn’t think he would have lived to see it again.

 

 

“My mom wasn’t from around here,” Len told Mick once.

“You said she was born in Ethiopia, right?”

It wasn’t what Len meant, but he hummed an affirmative noise and didn’t explain the rest.

\---

Mick figured it out years later when his mind was still reeling with loss and they’d had to stop in 1979 to make some repairs on the ship. He’d walked out, planning to go to a bar, but he’d ended up at Len’s old house instead. He watched from the street as a dark-skinned woman got out of a station wagon and went around to the back for her groceries.

He froze.

He knew her. Older, but he remembered her face from the Refuge. Remembered watching her rocking Len to sleep and the careful way she’d handled him.

“You’re a Time Master,” he accused as he rushed forward, one hand going for the Glock at his waist. Not the heat gun – too obvious, too big when they were trying to keep a low profile – but Len had taught him to never go anywhere unarmed. “You-”

“I left a long time ago,” she told him. “I fell in love.”

“Did he know?”

She smiled at him sadly. “My ship is cloaked in the backyard,” she said. “It’s been his jungle gym since he could walk.”

“He never said…” But he had, hadn’t he? Every time he said his mom wasn’t from around here. Every time he’d listed off an access code to Gideon that she said hadn’t been in use for decades. Mick had always shrugged it off, thinking that Len had just meant Ethiopia or that Len had found an old manual with some outdated codes. He’d never considered… “He wasn’t one. I know he wasn’t.”

“I’d never want him to join them,” she said as she picked up the bag she’d dropped when he came over. “I’ve only taught him what I have to keep him safe.”

“He’s _dead_.”

“I know. I quite remember when your group returned to the Refuge.” Her eyes lowered, sad. “I take it, he didn’t have a chance to use it, then.”

“Use what?”

“The necklace I gave him.”

“The weird pendant?” Mick asked, confused. “He never took the thing off.”

“I put a homing beacon into it. Told him that all he needed to do was speak the phrase and it would send him back to the ship,” she explained, just a hint of a fond smile on her lips. “Letting him choose the phrase probably hadn’t been my best idea. It was during his Pinnochio phase.”

“A homing beacon.”

She hummed. “ _There are no strings on me_. It had been his favorite part of the song.”

An echo of a memory. Mick thought… He could almost remember Len saying it before. Shreveport. The way the fire had grown too big to control and he’d been so lost in it… The pain as he started to burn with everything else.

_“Mick, look at me. Mick. Fuck. Come on. Fucking- There are no strings on me.”_

He’d never understood how he woke up in a Central City hospital.

“He still had it,” he said softly. “When did it send him back to? If he was out of time, when would it send him back to?”

“It would have defaulted to the last day he was on the current timeline,” she replied. “It syncs up.”

That was why. What was why Len would never sell that fucking house. He didn’t care about the house. He cared about what was in the backyard.

“I have to go.”

 

 

The others didn’t understand. To be fair, he didn’t give much of an explanation when he got back and heard Jax say the ship was good to go. He took the controls before Rip could and put in the coordinates. Tried not to think about the ship abandoned back in Nanda Parbat as he did. He didn’t have time for bad memories.

“Mr. Rory-”

“Sit your ass down. I’m not driving slow,” he said gruffly as the others hurried to secure themselves down.

“You can’t go back to events you’ve interfered in-”

“I’m not.”

He barely remembered the flight or the things the others said as they tried to get an explanation out of him. He flew and landed a little too roughly. Then, he was gone, rushing off the ship with the others in his wake as he made his way back down familiar streets.

The house was shabbier now than it had been in ’79 and the station wagon was long gone, but it was like he could see through the cloaking now. Now that he knew it was there.

“Is that a time ship?” Ray squawked behind him as he forced his way through the overgrown grass towards the spot where the ship sat.

He could hear Len screaming when he breached the threshold. Smelt the blood.

He…

God, his arm was gone.

Curled up at the foot of the main console and screaming. Blood everywhere. His left shoulder had nothing attached. Half his shirt was burned away and…

“Lenny, I need you to look at me. Where’s the medbay on here? It’s an old model. I don’t know the layout.”

“Doesn’t work,” Len croaked out. He was crying. “Doesn’t have a lot of power left. Ginny can’t-”

New plan. “I gotta pick you up, okay? Get you back to Gideon. It’s not far.”

“My arm-”

“I know. We’ll fix it. You just gotta stay with me, okay?” They didn’t have time for this. If the med bay on his mom’s ship didn’t work, this place was useless. Len had already lost too much blood. His skin felt cold. Mick thought he was going into shock.

He hefted him up, ignoring the horrified looks from the others as he shoved past them. They’d fix it, he told himself. They’d fix it.

 

 

When Len came to hours later, Mick was still shaking. Gideon had fixed Len’s arm – regenerated the whole thing while Mick watched and tried not to throw up – and she’d run scans on the necklace. Haircut had been fascinated by it. Rip had sputtered when he realized who Len’s mother was.

Mick didn’t care.

Len was _alive_.

“Hey,” Len whispered, voice hoarse, as he turned his head towards Mick. “All good?”

“You’ve had both arms regenerated at this point,” Mick told him, strained. “Stop losing limbs.”

“I’ll try.”

“You shoulda told me about your mom. I saw her in ’79. _She’s_ the one that told me about the necklace. You should have.”

Len licked his lips. “Didn’t know how.”

“You could have… You almost…” Mick’s breath shuddered and he leaned down to kiss Len. “You’re not allowed to die on me, you bastard.”

“I phoned home.”

Mick let out a watery laugh. “That’s not even the same fucking movie.”

The End

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so this fic may also have a prequel about Len's mom??? So... Yeah. If you guys want to see it, sound off.


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